Bill Bradley to Speak at Annual Benefit For Friends of Princeton Public Library

Matthew Hersh

The Friends of the Princeton Public Library will host its annual benefit this weekend, but unlike past years, where there has been a speaker, a dinner, and a booksigning, the organization is shooting from three-point range, having recruited former New Jersey Senator and Hall of Fame New York Knicks forward Bill Bradley to talk about his book, Values of the Game (Artisan, 1998).

Friends of the Princeton Public Library is a membership organization that helps support and enhance the library. The Friends also supply the bulk of the money for books and for all of the audio/visual material.

Normally, the annual event garners support through regular programming and overall community support for the library, but this year, the organization decided to do something big.

And it did, enlisting the 6'5 former Senator to offer his insight on the relationship between sport and its application to other life situations.

"We have a big new library, and we wanted to make a large, more inclusive event by making the speaker and dinner event connect to the family event the next day," said Margaret Sieck, a member of the Friends council.

So if you haven't yet figured it out, there is a sporting theme for this year's event.

Two members of the Friends council are former employees of Sports Illustrated for Kids, Ms. Sieck said, who neglected to mention that she herself is one of those two members. "We all cooked up this idea of connecting reading and sports activity into this event with Bill Bradley because of the sports angle, not the political angle."

This Friday, Mr. Bradley will speak at the Nassau Presbyterian Church at 8 p.m. following a 5:45 p.m. dinner at the library. Mr. Bradley will be introduced by the Princeton author John McPhee, who was the keynote speaker at the Friends' first annual fund-raiser. Mr. McPhee's first book, A Sense of Where You Are (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965), is the story of Mr. Bradley during his days as a star basketball player at Princeton University.

"So there's a very nice kind of circularity about it," said Clare Jacobus, president of the Friends council, adding that stepping up the event would only help the library in general.

"If the library is the community's living room, the Friends provide a lot of the furniture for it," she said. "Now that we've got double the space, we want to have double the fun and reach out to the community as this library is now even better able to do."

The concept of the scholar/athlete seemed to fit with Mr. Bradley, Ms. Jacobus added, because of the career he had after retiring from the Knicks after the 1977 season.

"The media largely concentrates on the negative side of the athletes," Ms. Sieck said. "But we all have kids who play sports, so we thought we'd get some positive influence out there."

The Saturday event, which will be held at the library between 4 to 6 p.m. will feature Alexander Wolff as the keynote speaker. As the senior writer of Sports Illustrated, Mr. Wolff will offer a seminar, "Hooked on Books: How a Princeton Kid Went from Reading Them to Writing Them."

That talk will be followed by an "All-Star Auction" on Saturday afternoon that will put a bicycle, a kayak, golf outings, Sports Illustrated for Kids office tour, a sailing trip, sports tickets, dance lessons, a treadmill, and artwork on the bidding block.

Many of the artists whose artwork is on display at the library have contributed pieces to be included in the auction, Ms. Sieck said. That auction, however, will be held on Friday, she said.

Also included on the Saturday auction list is a personalized Paul Muldoon poem the poet will subsequently discuss over lunch with the highest bidder.

For more information or to purchase tickets for Friday and Saturday events, call the Friends office at (609) 924-9528, ext. 280.